


The reason I am here

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Xenoblade Chronicles Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: After the attack on their home leaves them thirsting for revenge, Sylvain and a handful of friends set out to destroy as many of the robots ravaging the lands as they can. The road ahead won't be easy for anyone.No knowledge of Xenoblade Chronicles required!
Relationships: Blue Lions Students & Blue Lions Students (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	The reason I am here

**Author's Note:**

> I love the Blue Lions. I love Xenoblade. Therefore..... *gestures*

“They’re gone again?” Sylvain asked, rolling his eyes at even the mere thought of it. This was the third report this  _ week _ from a member of the Defence Force that his friends were missing.

“Yes,” the soldier said. “I’m sorry to ask, but this happens so frequently, and we’re short staffed as it is in the wake of the attack, and-”

“I’ll go and look,” Sylvain said with a sigh. He’d tried telling people in the past that there was no risk - they were training to fight Mechon, in case there was a repeat of the attack from last month. They weren’t off fighting dangerous monsters or anything.

That said, Sylvain would admit that he had no idea where they went, so he supposed he could understand the concern. Four young adults training outside the safe walls of the Colony, far from any artillery or anti-air guns… Something could definitely go wrong.

So, grudgingly, he set out to scour the beaches and find wherever they’d stowed themselves away. Once he hit the cave network, he could hear the sound of fighting. Nothing serious, he imagined, but the way the sounds echoed off the walls of the caves didn’t fill him with much hope.

When he finally broke into a more open area, he saw the full extent of what they were planning: in the centre of the cave, his four friends fought training dummies, practised drills, and Felix seemed to be attempting to break through Dedue’s defences.

The more alarming observation, however, were the stacks of supplies, combat gear, and weapons in one corner of the cave. “Hey!” Sylvain called, waving to them. In unison, they froze. Caught in the act. “Are you lot going somewhere?”

“No,” Felix said, at the same time that Dedue said ‘perhaps’ and Dimitri said ‘yes’. Ingrid shot all three of them an absolutely foul glare.

“Yes,” she admitted. Felix scowled.

Sylvain nodded. He opened his mouth to try and persuade them that, maybe, four young adults shouldn’t be the ones to go and fight an army of Mechon, but Dimitri spoke before he could even get half a word out. “You will not convince us to stay,” he said, his tone firm and his mouth set into a heavy line.

“Can I say anything at all?” he asked. The gears in his head were turning too fast for him to keep up, but he had a good idea of what he could say next.

Maybe it wasn’t a smart idea, but he was going to say it anyway.

“It depends what you’re going to say,” Felix said, discarding his sword with a grunt.

“I’ll come with you,” he said. Yep, definitely a stupid idea. Definitely going to get them all killed.

But hey, they were under assault periodically from the biggest Mechon army anyone could ever remember seeing. If they weren’t all dead by the end of the year, Sylvain would be surprised. May as well go out fighting.

Ingrid looked at Felix, who looked at Dedue, who looked at Dimitri. Dimitri looked at Sylvain and nodded. “We’d be glad to have you,” he said.

“Providing you can keep up, of course,” Felix added. And it was settled.

* * *

There were Mechon hunters in town, and to Ashe that only meant one thing: money.

The small group that currently resided in the barracks of their Colony were the real deal - they’d been fighting the toughest Mechon in the area in exchange for money from the townspeople. It was a good cause, but they clearly didn’t need  _ all  _ of it.

“Forgive me father, mother,” he mumbled under his breath as his hands reached for the pick that would get him into the storerooms. “Daisy and Fen have to eat.”

His parents wouldn’t be able to hear him, he knew; once someone returned to the Bionis, they weren’t conscious anymore. They couldn’t watch over him. If they could, maybe he would have a little more to work with when it came to feeding his siblings now the Mechon had taken their parents away.

The storerooms were mostly empty but for the glow of exactly what he was looking for: the Relics. Mysterious weapons that could, through some kind of magic or technology (Ashe didn’t know and, as he had no interest in throwing his life away, didn’t care), harm Mechon. What did matter was that they were rare, and they’d sell for a lot of money if he could just get them to the right vendor.

His hands were over the handle of a glowing spear when the light behind him disappeared. His heart pounding, he turned around, knowing exactly what he would see.

A blonde woman frowned down at him. “A thief,” she said, and Ashe knew there was no point denying it. How could he? There was no reason he’d be here other than that. She turned around, looking back at figures Ashe couldn’t see all that clearly. “Anyone fancy turning him in at this hour?”

“No,” a low, rumbling voice said, coming from someone Ashe couldn’t see. “I want to talk to him first. Bring him out into the light.”

The woman tugged him out of the storeroom, and Ashe winced at the sight that met his eyes. He knew that the Mechon hunters would be scary-looking - they were trained fighters, after all - but he hadn’t realised just how  _ huge  _ some of them would be. Facing them, he didn’t know what to say, even though he knew this was his only chance at getting out of this unscathed.

“Why were you stealing from us?” the tallest man said, and Goddess he was so broad. He could probably snap Ashe in half.

“I-I-”

“You would do well to answer him,” another man said. There was something gentle and pleasant to his face, his blue eyes, but Ashe still struggled to swallow down the nervousness in his throat.

“I need to feed my family,” he forced out. An attempt to win pity didn’t tend to work now he wasn’t quite so small and young, but hope sparked in his chest when he caught the way a handful of the faces in front of him softened.

“Well,” the first man said. “If you have skills worth seeing, you should show them now. If you can help us out, maybe something can be arranged.”

* * *

“Before we die, does anyone want to confess their love for me?” Sylvain asked, attempting to disguise his fear with a chuckle.

In reply, he received only a grunt from Felix and several assorted groans from the others. Even as he spoke, the Mechon surrounding them closed in a little more, blotting out the sky as they loomed over their small party.

“Just focus on scrapping as many of them as you can,” Felix said, turning around to face Sylvain only as part of his movement to pull his sword out of the sparking Mechon carcass he’d just finished tearing apart. “If we’re going down here, I’m taking as many as I can out with me.”

To his left, Sylvain could make out the sight of Dedue’s nod, the determined downturn of his mouth. With a grimace, he refocused his attention on the Mechon. Gods, there must have been more than thirty of them. They weren’t getting out of this in one piece, that was for sure.

And yet, almost as soon as Sylvain had resigned himself to pushing himself to the very end of his energy, a gap appeared in the Mechon in front of him. Three collapsed at his feet, smoking and twitching, and not a moment later a hammer slammed into the one on his right.

A bright light flashed, piercing through the darkness and driving a hole clean through one of the machines, passing them by with barely an inch to spare between the beam and Felix’s ear. “Please watch your shots!” Dimitri called out, his voice carrying above the sound of whirring parts. “There are live fighters here!”

“Oops, sorry!” a voice called in response. “We’ll be careful!”

It took a while for the figures to become clear, but the tide of the battle was decidedly turned and eventually their mysterious rescuers came into view. “You’re horribly beaten up,” the older woman said, immediately laying her hands on Sylvain’s arm. “Let me get that.”

They stuck around for a short while, but with time the highs of battle and that very near-death experience wore off and they moved to part ways. “It’s dangerous where we’re going,” Ashe explained, gesturing up the road. “You should turn the other way.”

“Oh, we came from that settlement!” the younger girl, who’d introduced herself as Annette, replied. Her smile was sunny, easy. She clearly knew what she was doing. “But we can help you get back there, if you want a hand.”

Felix moved to say no, but Dimitri raised a hand and shook his head. “If you would like to come along with us, then we would be grateful for any extra aid. Ether manipulation is not a strong suit in our group.”

“I can tell,” Mercedes said with a short laugh. “Well, anything we can do to help sounds good to me. Lead the way!”

* * *

The dawn several weeks later saw them in the ruins of an ancient civilisation in Satorl Marsh.

The task was simple: there were Mechon everywhere, swarming in and out of ruins, blocking the road, and making it difficult for anyone to traverse the region. If approached, the Mechon would attack, and in general they were a hazard to all the locals and any traders who wanted to pass through.

There were, quite bluntly, heaps of them. They were fierce, defensive of this territory that no one really controlled and that they definitely didn’t belong in. Sylvain lost count of the number he ran through with his lance, or the different models that Ashe’s arrows pierced.

It was difficult, sure, but mostly it was just a slog. There were  _ so many _ of them crawling about the place, fowling it up with discarded oil and poisoning the water. The outcome, by the contrary, was almost inevitable - no Mechon was smart enough to stand against the wit of an experienced, well practised squad like theirs.

There was something satisfying about it, once the fighting finally came to an end. There was a sort of peace that always followed these skirmishes, except it wasn’t quiet. It was the sound of wildlife emerging from dark hiding places, the reopening of trade routes, and footfall towards the graves of the departed.

The sound of life returning, against all the odds.

Sylvain may not always have been much of a fighter, and maybe this wasn’t exactly the glamorous life he’d hoped for once upon a time. But at the same time, it wasn’t all bad either. Above everything else, they were doing the right thing.

* * *

Valak Mountain was an absolute dastard of a place to fight in. Freezing cold, ridiculously vertical, and impossible to traverse safely. Their task didn’t make things much easier.

The Mechon they’d been coming up against lately were more powerful, more dangerous. In some cases, they’d needed to use the power of Crests alongside their weapons to even stand a chance at landing a hit. 

It was rough, effectively being down a couple of members for each fight, and they’d had to move towards taking on smaller squads where they could find them. Like there, on top of some forsaken mountain, battering a handful of ridiculously strong Mechon against the mountainside all while trying to avoid attracting the attention of the local wildlife.

Slowly but surely, however, they managed to wear their enemies down, and it was only a matter of time before their defences cracked and they could move on to somewhere safer and warmer.

That was when it happened. The armour of the strongest Mechon in the group, the one with a sword that moved fast as lightning, split in two under the force of Sylvain’s lance. The Mechon stumbled backwards, and Sylvain raised his hand to wipe his face of the oil splatter. His fingers came back red.

Blood. Blood, spattered on his face and the snow beneath them. Blood,  _ red _ blood, from a Mechon. It felt like the whole world stopped, just for a moment, when the thing inside the Mechon raised its head.

Bloodied, battered, but it was...no. Sylvain recognised the angle of that nose, the curve of those eyes, the wave in that dark blue hair. It was Glenn, bleeding out into the snow. Glenn, who died months ago in the attack that spurred their quest to take down all the Mechon they could.

Glenn, staring at the point of Felix’s sword as he broke out of formation and charged towards him. “This isn’t him!” he cried. “It’s not. Glenn is  _ dead.” _ Felix stood, shaking, above the broken body of his brother.

His hands wavered. He let out a strangled sound and tore his gaze away, and then...his sword stabbed down with a sound Sylvain only half registered, and Glenn let out a cry.

Glenn looked up, and Sylvain watched Felix’s movements still. There was the light of recognition in his eyes, even if it was there for no more than a moment. Glenn’s hand rose, cupping Felix’s cheek (the hand that used to help them all up off the ground when they fell, the hand that always wiped away Felix’s tears).

And then it fell, and Glenn was gone.

How were they meant to respond to that? How were they meant to feel, knowing the number of Mechon they’d killed? How many friends had they despatched in this endless quest for survival? What about  _ family? _

There was only one thing he could think of to do. “You okay to keep going, Felix?” Sylvain asked, placing what he hoped was a comforting hand on Felix’s shoulder. It was cold - as always - and a snowstorm was on its way. They needed to move on.

Felix’s eyes found the smoking wreckage and limp, lifeless body one final time before he turned around, grabbing his sword from where he’d impaled it in the snow. “I’ll have to be,” he said. “There are still plenty of people still living who need this sword.”

They marched onward. Maybe, one day, their fight would finally end.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed, please consider leaving a kudos/comment :) I also have a twitter @samariumwriting where I talk about writing, amongst other things


End file.
